Measurement of thermal properties of the LHCb VELO detector using track-based software alignment

TL;DR

This paper investigates the thermal properties of the LHCb VELO detector using track-based software alignment, revealing significant thermal shrinkage at operational temperatures and confirming laboratory extrapolations.

Contribution

It provides the first in-situ measurement of VELO's thermal shrinkage using real-time alignment data during a temperature scan.

Findings

Significant shrinkage of VELO modules at -30°C

Good agreement between in-situ measurements and laboratory extrapolations

Thermal effects are critical for detector stability and alignment

Abstract

The thermal properties of the LHCb Vertex Locator (VELO) are studied using the real-time detector alignment procedure. The variation of the position and orientation of the detector elements as a function of the operating temperature of the VELO is presented. This study uses a dataset collected by the LHCb experiment during a VELO temperature scan performed at the end of LHC Run 2 (October 2018). Significant shrinkage of the VELO modules is observed at the operating temperature of $-30^\circ$ compared to the laboratory measurements on a single module taken at a range of temperatures from $+45^\circ$ to $-25^\circ$. The thermal shrinkage expected from the extrapolation of laboratory measurements to lower temperatures, and the results of this alignment study are in good agreement.